


where the green land ended

by Siria



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28229334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: Once upon a time there was a man called Yusuf, who lived by himself in a small house built right where the green land ended and the desert began.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 9
Kudos: 147





	where the green land ended

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon) for letting me write this at her!

Once upon a time there was a man called Yusuf, who lived by himself in a small house built right where the green land ended and the desert began. He lived alone, this Yusuf, but he wasn’t lonely. One morning each week he walked along the path that led from his small house to the closest town. Each person he met in the market greeted him warmly with smiles and cries of greeting, for he was a man held in high esteem. One evening each week, Yusuf walked back along the path from the town to his small house, fortified by purchases and prayers and promises that he must come dine with one of half a dozen families before the month was out.

Yusuf lived alone, and he wasn’t lonely, but if you had asked him he might have said that he was waiting for someone—he just didn’t know who.

After all, Yusuf had been born in the small house, and raised there, and lived all his thirty years there. He couldn’t imagine a life led without the river’s green land in front of him, and the hot desert wind at his back. He had never been to the city that lay a ten-day journey over the sands. He had never followed the river along to where it merged its waters with the great Middle Sea. 

What he knew was home; home was what he knew.

But sometimes Yusuf found himself watching the horizon, waiting for someone—who?—to find him.

One day, Yusuf was walking along the path towards the town, with the green land on his left and the red land on his right, when he heard a commotion away in the distance. It was a caravan, Yusuf saw, silhouetted on top of a sand dune: its camels bellowing their distaste for the men struggling around them. Yusuf didn’t consider himself a warrior, but he carried his father’s sword at his waist and he knew how to use it, and he would consider himself a coward if he didn’t help those who had been set upon by bandits. So Yusuf unsheathed his sword, and he ran.

Yusuf was quick, but by the time he reached the caravan, most of the men lay dead on the blood-soaked sand. Only one man was still moving, trying to haul himself out from beneath a tangle of ropes that had once secured goods to a camel’s back. Yusuf hurried to help him, thinking him caught—and then stopped dead in his tracks.

This man, you see, looked nothing like any other man Yusuf had ever known—and not just because his skin was startlingly pale and bare beneath the morning sun. His eyes were a colour Yusuf had never seen before and his legs and flanks were mottled like a fish with scales of the very same shade of green. Yusuf had heard tales of the jinn but none of them had ever described a being like this. In the man's hand was a sword stained bright with blood and his sides were heaving like he’d been running for leagues.

When he noticed Yusuf, the man tried and failed to heave himself upright on trembling arms, his grip on the sword hilt white-knuckled and the breath hissing out of him in a string of strange and sibilant words. His teeth, Yusuf saw with fascination, were a little sharper than anyone’s teeth should rightly be.

Who would have judged Yusuf for backing away at such a sight? For running to the town to seek help against the monster which had slain a whole caravan single-handed?

Few, perhaps. But Yusuf would have judged himself—this man who lived alone but who wasn’t lonely, this man who sometimes felt as if he’d spent his whole life waiting for someone else. And so he found himself taking a step forward, not a step back. He sheathed his sword, and he crouched and offered the man his free hand and he was afraid, yes, but Yusuf didn’t think that was why something was aching, tender and new, in his chest.

The man looked at him, clearly bewildered and angry, mouth caught in a half-snarl. Yusuf stretched his hand out wide and said, “Let me help.”

And none of it should have been possible—not this man who wasn’t truly a man, not the bodies which lay around them, not the way the man took Yusuf’s hand in his—but perhaps Yusuf was someone destined for impossible things.

The man hesitated, but he reached out and clasped Yusuf’s hand in his, and Yusuf helped him to stand on trembling legs. Despite the growing heat of the day, the man’s skin was cool to the touch. Together they made their way slowly across the hot sands of the dunes, and the closer they got to the river, the steadier the man was on his feet and the stronger the longing in his eyes.

It was the water, Yusuf realised. Whether the man was drawn to it or was called by it made no matter—he was a creature made for rivers and the great Middle Sea and whatever lay beyond. He wasn't a jinn. He was something else entirely. The man’s strides lengthened as they reached the river bank, and Yusuf watched in fascination as the man shook himself free from Yusuf’s touch and with a leap slipped into the river and was gone. Barely a ripple marked the spot where he’d entered the water.

Yusuf watched to see if the man would reappear, but he did not. He sat down on the bank of the river and watched, but the man didn’t surface. He waited until the sun sank down towards the horizon, but the man did not come back. Yusuf stood, his back aching, and walked along the path that led to his small house, and lay down to sleep. That night, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Yusuf no longer felt as if he were waiting for someone to arrive—but he did feel lonely.

Perhaps, he thought, as he pulled his coverlet over himself, that was how you knew you weren't waiting for someone to arrive—you were waiting for them to come back. 

The days passed. Yusuf spent each one down by the riverbank, his gaze on the water and his work neglected. At the end of the week, he didn’t walk along the path that led to the town, nor go to the market, nor kneel beside the townsfolk in prayer. He couldn’t have explained why if you’d asked him—any more than he could explain it to his friends when they came looking for him, first with questions of surprise and then with cries of concern.

“I have been waiting,” was all Yusuf would say to them, and no more than that.

In the end, they did as most people would do—they gave up and walked away, some in irritation, some in the kind of frustrated worry that often curdles to anger. That meant there was no one there to see what happened on the evening of the thirtieth day save for Yusuf himself. He watched as the sun sank towards the western horizon, and the first stars appeared, and the river waters began to churn, and Yusuf stood with a smile and stretched out his hand.

In the morning, all the townsfolk found was Yusuf's thobe, neatly folded on the riverbank, his sword and sandals placed next to it.

Once upon a time, when there was a little more magic abroad in the world, two men lived by themselves in a small house on an island bounded by the Middle Sea. There were stories told of them, although they did not know it—of an honest man who was lured away from his humble home by the unnatural enchantments of one of the merfolk. Or were they about a prince of the seas who was stolen from his kin and rescued by a landwalker with kind eyes? Or were they the ones told by a town’s anxious mothers, keen to keep their little ones away from the crumbling cottage that stood right where the green land ended and the desert began?

Who can say?

There was another story, of course, one that told of soft kisses and softer words and the best salve for loneliness known to time or the human heart—but that one, well, that story Yusuf and the love he had waited for would keep to themselves.


End file.
